1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transfer medium applicable for a method of forming an image by transfer, and particularly to a transfer medium effective for liquid ink and a method of forming an image by transfer of ink using the transfer medium. The present invention further concerns a method of forming an image which enables the printing by liquid ink on various printing media, for example, a simple textile printing using a cloth as an image support.
2. Background Art
Printing techniques have been variously proposed and put in practical use. In particular, as information processing techniques have been significantly developed in recent years, printing methods using liquid ink have been widely used as output units of computers, facsimiles and word processors. Of these printing methods, an ink Jet printing method is of a type with non-impact, in which there is little generated noise upon printing. It is further advantageous in enabling high speed printing, and in carrying out printing on a plain paper sheet without any specific fixing process, and therefore, it has been widely used.
The ink jet printing method having the above advantages has been applied for various printing media as well as a plain paper sheet. In particular, the application for textile printing on cloths has been remarked. However, a textile printing apparatus is on the industrial scale, and it is difficult for a user to easily and freely perform the precise printing using the above apparatus.
Such an ink jet type textile printing has been proposed, for example in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. SHO 61-55277. It discloses a cloth used for ink jet printing which contains a compound having no dyeing affinity substantially against a dye to be printed to the cloth in an amount of 0.1 to 50 wt %, and an ink jet printing method using the cloth, thereby preventing bleeding of the ink jet printing. However, this method does not examine the initial feeding ability of the cloth in the general ink jet printer, and therefore, it is practically limited to the industrial textile printing application.
A technique for solving the above problem has been disclosed by the applicant of the present invention in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. SHO 62-53492. In this technique, a broad cloth of 100% cotton is dipped in a solution containing the component of an ink receiving layer and is slightly squeezed, and is then put on a commercial reporting paper sheet, so that the broad cloth of cotton is easily mounted on a printer, thus ensuring the feeding ability of the cloth while preventing the bleeding and blurring of an image. In this method, the cloth after printing is removed from the printer, after which the fixing is performed and the ink receiving layer solution is removed with a neutral detergent, thus forming a printed article by an ink jet printer. With this method, the ink jet textile printing on a non-industrial scale becomes possible using only the solution containing the component of the ink receiving layer, cloth, ink jet printer, and drier; or a plain paper sheet, steam iron and commercial detergent. As for the liquid and the solution containing the component of the ink receiving layer suitable for the cloth, these are not widely commercially available, but can be obtained by ink jet printer manufacturers or the like.
In the above method, since the ink jet printer is of a type wherein a printing medium is manually mounted on a cylindrical platen as a main feeding means, the cloth overlapped on a paper sheet is easily mounted. However, in the recent ink jet printer, a printing medium is mainly automatically mounted to a feeding means; accordingly the mounting described in the above method is not suitable for the feeding means of this automatic mounting type ink jet printer. Moreover, a cloth tends to cause wrinkling, and thereby generates irregularities on the surface to be printed, resulting in the disturbance in a printing image, and the breakage of a printing head. In the above method, therefore, it is very difficult to handle a cloth.
To avoid the difficulty in handling a cloth, there may be considered a method using transfer type textile printing.
This method has been already proposed using thermal transfer printing. It includes the steps of preparing an intermediate transfer medium in which an ink receiving layer separable in a film shape by heating is formed on a base material such as a paper sheet; carrying out printing on the intermediate transfer medium, overlapping the ink receiving layer side of the intermediate transfer medium on a cloth, ironing the laminated body from the base material side for separating the whole ink receiving layer from the supporting body together with a printing image, thereby bonding it to the cloth. In this case, however, the portion except for the printing image, that is, the portion except for a region stuck with ink is transferred and bonded on the cloth, so that the film-like ink receiving layer is present over the whole cloth. This causes a problem that the surface of the cloth is quite different from the original one in quality and feeling.
On the other hand, a method using ink jet printing has been disclosed, for example in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication Nos. SHO 53-65483 and SHO 60-76343. In the former, ink jet printing is performed on a transfer sheet constituted of a sheet base coated with transfer varnish, to form an image, and a cloth to be printed is overlapped on the transfer sheet and pressurized at a specified pressure, thus transferring an image on the cloth. In this method, the transfer varnish in a region formed with no image tends to be transferred on the cloth together with the image; or it is difficult for a user to easily remove only the transfer varnish without disturbance of the image by the soaping performed after the transfer.
In the latter, that is, in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. SHO 60-76343, there has been proposed a method of imparting ink containing dye on a smooth surface endless support having no affinity with dye and no permeability for dye, removing solvent, and continuously transferring the dye on a cloth. In this method, only the image portion can be transferred on the cloth; however, the special ink jet printing apparatus has an endless support, and accordingly it is also difficult for a user to easily perform the printing on a cloth using a commercially available ink jet printer.
Thus, there are required a new transfer medium and a new method of forming an image using the transfer medium, which is capable of using the commercially available ink jet printer, being easy in handling, and keeps the quality of the cloth after printing.